Recently Ardis Technologies collaborated with Sunteq as a new dealer in Slowakei on the delivery of the central storage solution…
Recently Ardis Technologies collaborated with Sunteq as a new dealer in Slowakei on the delivery of the central storage solution. The SSD portion is built on the DDP10EF system with NVMe SSD drives and support for the NVMe-OF RDMA protocol, which enabled us to achieve real-world read speeds of over 8 GB/s per client. The HDD portion is based on the EXR78 chassis. Both parts form a single logical volume with a combined capacity of 300 TB + 1008 TB.
A fire in 2023 destroyed most of the technological equipment of the Slovak Film Institute (SFÚ) in Bratislava, without which it was no longer possible to continue the Institute’s work in preserving our film heritage.
The company SUNTEQ won the competitive tender among other suppliers with a proposal to deliver a central storage system, computing equipment, infrastructure components, and full integration of new technologies.
The requirements for the central storage system were specified with regard to the future development of workstations and the technological demands that may arise from the transition to new workflows and formats:
* Capability to support at least 20 clients (macOS, Windows OS, Linux OS)
* Hybrid storage system with SSD and HDD, with a minimum capacity of 300 TB to 1 PB, easily expandable
* Internal SSD data throughput of at least 40 GB/s with support for NVMe-OF RDMA; or 20 GB/s for HDD
* Minimum data throughput per individual client of 8 GB/s, optimized for 4K DPX format
* Connectivity via Fibre Optics
The SSD portion is built on the DDP10EF system with NVMe SSD drives and support for the NVMe-OF RDMA protocol, which enabled us to achieve real-world read speeds of over 8 GB/s per client.
The HDD portion is based on the EXR78 chassis. Both parts form a single logical volume with a combined capacity of 300 TB + 1008 TB.
Thanks to the AVFS file system and a graphical management interface, file workflows can be easily configured for any number of users. The remaining active 100 Gb network components are provided by Mellanox (Nvidia) and ATTO. An important component is the NVMe-oF initiator developed by StarWind, used on clients running the Windows operating system. One of the clients is a macOS workstation that accesses the storage via the ATTO iSCSI protocol, achieving read speeds of approximately 5 GB/s.
The designed system supports 13 restoration workstations (PFClean, DIAMANT), 2 color grading suites (Resolve, BaseLight), DCI mastering (Clipster), audio restoration and post-production (CEDAR, Pro Tools), and a scanner workstation (DFT).
All workstations are connected to the storage system via a 100 Gb optical link.
Additionally, AVFS exports SMB/NFS protocols, which are used to connect to the archival tape library.
Why NVMe-OF RDMA?
Why is NVMe-oF RDMA ideal for video production and color grading?
Read all technical issues very well explained on the sunteq website.
Watch the video
“What is RDMA?”
Video from RoCE Initiative
